


Those Slavering Jaws

by Haint



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Daryl is not, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kink Meme, M/M, Mating, Miscommunication, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rick is human, Trauma, Werewolf Mates, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 23:31:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5560024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haint/pseuds/Haint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You better run, Rick Grimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Slavering Jaws

He woke in a mindless, consuming panic and would have thrashed himself up onto his feet or at least onto his ass if it hadn't been for the morphine.

Everything was a dull, numbing ache, except for his shoulder. He forced his eyes to open and a sharp white light blinded him. There was tape on the back of his hand and for a split second he didn't know where or when he was—his shoulder throbbed with heat and agony under the packing an ER nurse was holding to it, his hand was slammed back into the floor above his head and the gun went sliding away, a nurse was holding him up on his side while a doctor lifted one of his legs and looked between them, the sheriff was standing over his bed and looking everywhere and anywhere but at him or at his shoulder as he said _I'm sorry son_ , Abraham was standing where the sheriff had been and saying _I'll kill him boy I swear to God I will so don't you do nothing stupid now you hear that there don't mean shit it don't mean nothing_ , Carl was in the other room and he was crying he was crying _Dad it hurts Dad I'm scared Dad help me Dad where are you Dad Dad Dad_ , the kitchen floor was slippery with blood and almost warm against his cheek as he struggled, and Shane was there Shane was always there Shane and his hot breath against his ear _Rick baby you're mine you've always been mine how could you forget you're mine mine mine_ and then the teeth _—_

A woman's voice said, “Rick?”

He blinked. He still couldn't see. He closed his eyes, full of hot tears, and felt someone come closer. His throat closed and the back of his mouth emitted a low, guttural groan.

“Rick.”

He was breathing fast, clenching and unclenching his fists. His shoulder was hurting him in some unsettling way that he couldn't place, and again he saw the blood-slicked floor, heard the mouth at his ear gaping wetly open.

“Rick, it's Carol.”

_Carol_ , he thought, and was confused. There'd been no Carol then. He didn't know a Carol until—

A soft hand, a woman's hand, touched his grinding jaw. “Rick,” said the voice, and it had gone low and soft. “You're all right. It's over.”

And that was when he remembered.

Rick's lips pulled back and he gasped “ _Where,”_ grating it out through his teeth. The more awake he got, the more everything hurt. His eyes were still squeezed shut, sticky with drying tears.

“Hershel's.” The hand went away. “It was closer than Daryl's, and you—”

She went quiet.

Rick was sweating.  _Calm down_ , he thought, and tried to slow his breathing. At this rate he'd hyperventilate and pass out. He swallowed hard, throat dry, and tried opening his eyes again, squinting into the glare. The morphine always gave him a headache. “Light.”

“Oh.” He heard her move, and blinds rattled. The glare went away. Rick blinked through the after-images, willing himself to see.

Carol was watching him. She was a different creature from the woman he'd last seen in the woods, mouth smeared with blood. She'd put some clothes on, at least, and looked more or less like the subdued housewife he'd first met, head down and flinching at every raised hand and voice. The only thing missing was the bruises.

Rick shied away from that line of thinking, looked beyond Carol instead. He didn't recognize the room. A plain white bed, a dresser. There was a chair against the wall with a basin on it, and that full of bloody bandaging. Hanging from a hook on the door were his jacket and his belt, and beside the door were his boots. His holstered gun was on the dresser. To one side, in the periphery of his vision, there was a second chair with a metal tray full of medical paraphernalia on it.

Rick's neck and his left shoulder felt stiff. Stiff and numb. When he tried to turn his head that way, the tape and gauze resisted him.

He tried to lick his lips, which was like licking sandpaper. His breath smelled stale and chemical. “What time is it.”

“Almost six.” Carol's eyes didn't move. Her voice was so careful. “You haven't been out for long. You didn't get caught until around four.”

_Four,_ Rick thought. He'd pulled into Hershel's driveway at about midnight. That made it nearly three hours that he'd lasted, three hours that he'd run before getting caught.

“Gareth was furious,” said Carol. She warmed. “He was ready to fight on it until Tyreese and Morgan stepped in. Michonne and Andrea weren't too happy either. Daryl's not very popular right—”

She went quiet again.

Rick remembered seeing Carol there, standing back with the others, the ones who hadn't participated, their quiet, shadowed shapes with eyes like pinpricks of yellow flame in the darkness. She'd stood there, as naked as the others, and watched while Gareth talked him into the chase, that hopeless run, trapped him into it with what he'd done for her and Sophia. She'd watched and never said a word.

_That's not fair,_ said the rational part of him,  _it's not like that._ But the rest of him, the part of Rick that was clutching at the bed with shaking hands and trying so hard to  _breathe, breathe, breathe_ , feeling the swelling pain in his neck and shoulder, it was exactly like that. If she had just been willing to press charges, if she hadn't been so goddamn unwilling to use human law, if he just hadn't stuck his neck out and done what he did to keep her and Sophia safe and given himself rank in the pack—

_You still want to be good cop,_ Gareth had said.  _You don't take any of this seriously. But this is real, Rick, this is our law, and if you're not going to kill me, you better run._

“Rick,” said Carol, suddenly so much closer, and she was leaning over him, reaching out with her hand. “Do you want me to get Da—”

“ _Get off,”_ he said. Strangling it out. His hands fisted in the sheets even as his body pressed back into the mattress. _“Get off.”_

The hand dropped and Carol turned and left. The door closing behind her was almost jarring—the room came abruptly into focus, as if he hadn't really been seeing it before. Hershel's, she'd said. This was Hershel's place. Rick's car was outside. Or it was, unless someone had moved it. No, it would be there. It had to be there.

Rick eased his right arm under him and rolled onto the elbow, awkward for having to keep his head as straight and still as possible, his left arm folded up against his chest. The sheets pulled down and away, and he realized he was naked. His composure trembled, a wire pulled too tight, but worse was realizing that he was too clean. Someone had cleaned him. Someone had washed him, or at least wiped him off.

 _I'll take care a' you, Rick,_ a mouth whispering into his ear, damp and hot, the fist in his hair pushing his ear against that mouth, _I swear I'll take care a' you—_

Rick's legs were black with bruises, his arms livid with scratches and glistening with ointment. When he pushed himself up onto his arm and into a sitting position, every inch of his body shuddered with pain—almost. He hesitated. Dread and a need to know anyway was making him nauseous, but he had neither the hands nor the stomach. He leaned cautiously forward, then back. Flexed a leg, and then a few other muscles. Arched his back as much as he could.

 _Don't,_ he'd cried out, toward the end, not even demanding  anymore and very nearly begging. His thoughts had become scattered and incoherent, all of his training and nature completely undone to the point where he couldn't even get anything out through his terror other than that childish _Don't! Don't!_ The somehow grotesque, dissociative disbelief of his jeans being pulled apart at the seams, stitches popping so loud.

Rick's stomach heaved, and he threw back the sheets, slid off the bed, and made it to the basin just in time to dump the bloody bandages onto the floor before he threw up.

The door opened while he was still hunched over the basin, naked but for his bandaged shoulder, which ached even through the haze of morphine. He didn't even have time to consider being embarrassed before the door closed again and Hershel said, “You ought to be lying down.”

“Nuh.” Rick spat, sat back on his knees and heels, shook his head, and wiped his mouth with a handful of soiled bandage as he breathed. “Nuh. No.”

Hershel sighed. Rick thought he might try to come over, but the old man stayed where he was. “Son, you are exhausted, hurt, and in a lot of shock. You need to lie down. I promise you're safe here.”

 _Safe,_ Rick thought, and for the briefest of moments he was there again, in the hot and sticky night, cowering against the base of a tree, arms bloody with scratches and his legs weak from fear and fatigue, watching Daryl walk toward him out of the dark woods and feeling such sweet warm relief that he'd smiled, _I'm safe._

Hershel was staring at him, and Rick realized only then that he'd started to shake. He made himself stop. He didn't like the expression on Hershel's face—it said that Hershel himself was shocked, and appalled. He hadn't expected what he'd found in this room. Whatever he'd expected in the first place.

The trickle of sweat reminded Rick that he was naked. Reaching behind him, he dragged the sheet off the bed and partially over himself, just enough that he could pretend.

“Muh clothes,” Rick said, and cleared his throat. “My clothes.”

“They're,” said Hershel, and hesitated. “They're gone,” he said finally.

Stitches popping like firecrackers in the street outside, and there was a confused memory where half of him was back on the wet kitchen floor, the big hand on his back keeping him effortlessly down while the other big hand pulled down his pants, and the other half of him was in the woods, struggling against the body atop him, hearing seams give way in jerking thrums.

“Rick,” said Hershel softly, and Rick was stricken to feel the tears dripping down his face. “Rick.”

Hershel held out his open hands. Rick shook his head, scrubbed the back of right arm over his face.

There was a silence. Hershel stood there waiting. Rick caught himself staring off into nothing, not even thinking, his mind a blank. There was a void where his decisions should be, and he struggled to even care.

“Rick,” said Hershel finally. “I've got some old clothes in the drawer.”

There, that was a direction. _Yes,_ thought Rick, _yes,_ because there was nothing he wanted more in that moment than to be wearing clothes. He wanted his pants and his belt and his boots. He wanted his shirt and his hat. He wanted his badge and his gun.

“I can help you with them,” continued Hershel.

 _“No,”_ said Rick, and couldn't himself tell whether that was fear or fury that made his refusal so sharp. “No.”

Hershel said nothing, and Rick didn't want to look at him. _Leave,_ he thought, _oh God, please leave,_ and then—here was a list, here was a series of actions that would get him out, get him safe—then he could get up, he could get dressed, he could put on his belt and his boots and his jacket and his gun, he could go outside and get into his car and drive away from Hershel's farm, away from the woods full of howling, he could go home and lock the door and look at a picture of a happy family and then he could pick up his fucking gun and put it to his fucking head—

“Son,” said Hershel softly, almost murmuring, “who was it bit you first?”

Rick's throat closed. He couldn't breathe, yet his heart was pounding in his ears, and his entire body had gone cold despite the stifling room, the sweaty sheet. His shoulders hunched on their own and he unconsciously turned to the side, some deeper part of his brain unwilling to offer either front or back. From the corner of his eye, he saw Hershel's head cock, saw him step forward, and he knew what Hershel was listening to, what Carol had been listening to. It was so easy to forget. He didn't want to think on what they'd been smelling.

“—he wouldn't have been so rough with you,” said Hershel, “if he hadn't seen it.” Simply, as fact, without making apologies.

Rick was trembling, and this time no effort of his could stop it. “No one bit me.”

From the back of his throat, Hershel made a noise of pure dismay. “Rick—”

“No one bit me.” Rick's eyes fixed on the wall. He willed himself to believe his own words. “That never happened.”

Without even looking, Rick could see Hershel's composure failing. “Rick, he'll need to know—you scared him to death when you started screaming—”

He had, hadn't he. Started screaming. He remembered now. The teeth in his flesh and the hands pushing what was left of his pants down to the knees, his ass exposed and one part of him back in the kitchen as it was happening and the other part of him on the ground in the woods where it was about to happen, and something inside him had given way and the screams had just torn out of him. Such screams. Lunatic. Despairing.

He hadn't even screamed the first time.

“No one bit me.” Rick's voice was faint, but it was certain. “No one.”

Hershel was silent. Rick wondered what he smelled like now. Like morphine, probably, and whatever else Hershel had injected him with. It occurred to him not for the first time that there must be a stash somewhere in the house. Most drugs were too weak for most of Hershel's patients, so he would have the good stuff, the strong stuff. The stuff that he'd only give out in spurts to the normies. Illegal, obviously. He wasn't even a real doctor.

“You need rest,” said Hershel. His voice was firm. “I'll talk to Daryl. I...” He stopped, clearly listening, and then continued in a gentler tone. “I'll explain what I can.” Another pause. “He had to talk to Merle. He ought to be back any minute.”

Rick said nothing. He was, suddenly, so tired that a fog lay over the room. He wanted to lie down almost as much as he'd wanted to get dressed the minute before. The morphine ache made him want to lower his head to the floor and close his eyes.

“Please, Rick,” said Hershel. He'd moved back to the door. “Just sleep. You're safe now.”

Rick didn't move. He didn't turn his head. He waited, breathing evenly, calmly, telling himself that they were listening. That everything in this house could hear him.

The door opened and closed. He half expected to hear the lock turn, but it didn't.

Hershel hadn't been there. Neither had Dale. Not that he'd seen. But that could mean anything, guilt or innocence, collusion or ignorance. Would they even see it as collusion? Or would they have been like Carol, seeing nothing wrong, only uncomfortable afterwards when the screaming had stopped and she had to look the screamer in the eye? _This is our law,_ Gareth said, and they'd all agreed. The look on Michonne's face when she told him _You better run, Rick Grimes._

Only Daryl had warned him.

Standing up was agony. Any little movement of his head or his left arm set his neck and shoulder on fire, and the bandaging had begun to spot here and there with red. His legs wanted to give out almost immediately, and his head was thick with painkiller. But there were clothes in the second drawer of the dresser, an old church group t-shirt that was too big and a pair of faded jeans that were too big and too short at the same time. He had to tie the jeans on with his belt, which meant his gun could not go on. He rolled it into his jacket.

Carrying his jacket, his gun, and his boots, Rick went to the door, turned the knob, and eased it open, wincing at every creak.

Beth was in the hall.

“Rick,” she whispered. All wide eyes and pale hair and gleaming white teeth. Beth really looked nothing like her sister.

He saw immediately, instinctively, how different she was with him, how awkward. There was a distance there that hadn't been before, and she didn't seem to quite know what to do with it. The last time he'd seen her, Beth had hugged him close and kissed his cheek, but now she stood away from him like she was afraid. Or like he was dangerous.

“I heard you,” she said, still in a whisper. “Last night.”

She hadn't been there. Rick was grateful for that. He didn't want to have that memory of her in his head. He didn't want to know what she looked like naked and snarling.

“Daddy says you're hurt,” said Beth. “He says you need rest and not to bother you.”

Rick's mouth opened and he heard himself say “Help me, Beth.”

Beth's eyes widened even more. They glanced down the hall, presumably where there were others.

Rick followed the glance. He mouthed, Can they hear me.

Beth shook her head. No.

“Help me, Beth,” he whispered. “I need to get to the car.”

Beth's eyes took in his face, his scratched-up hands, his bare feet. They took in the familiar clothes that didn't fit him and the jacket with the gun in it under one arm. Her eyes traced the bandages on his neck and shoulder, the stiff and pained way that he stood, the bruises on his face and neck.

“Daryl won't like it,” she said.

Rick had been expecting it, but it was still a shock, still upsetting to the point of panic. _You're mine_ and _Let it be me_ and the teeth in his flesh, the blood on the floor. Rick kept his eyes clear and steady and ignored the way Beth's eyes fixed on the pulse in his neck as he said, “Daryl doesn't have to like it.”

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, thinking. He watched it coming from a mile down the road before she actually said, “Did you really not want...”

Rick stood there, looking at her, and only realized that the silence had gone on too long when he realized Beth was nervously backing away. That almost, almost made him smile.

“Help me, Beth,” he said again, quietly. He let his voice go low, pleading. “Please. _Beth_.”

She led him down the hall deeper into the house, stopping now and then to listen. He kept close, concentrating on his own breathing, on controlling himself in a house full of people who could smell his fear. She took him through a door into a smaller hall, and then into a room that opened into the unoccupied kitchen, and then they were at the back door with the warm Georgia summer warming the threshold. The sour smell of grass and heat filled the kitchen. He could see his car through the screen door.

“Beth.” He couldn't bring himself to take her hand, but he did meet her eyes. “Thank you.”

There was a moment when he thought she would kiss him again, but then she looked down at his bandaged neck and shoulder and didn't. Instead, she smiled up at him. “I'm eighteen next year,” she whispered. “Then I can fight Daryl for you. I'll make you mine. I promise.”

Then her head twitched to the side as if she had heard something and she was gone, running down the hall. Rick himself turned in the opposite direction and opened the screen door, aware that someone must be coming, that he needed to go, that it could be anyone, and he stumbled heartsick out into the sunshine and toward his car, the grass tickling his feet.

 _I'll make you mine,_ she said. Sweet Beth, good Beth, who looked up at him with her little girl's eyes and smiled at him with her gleaming white teeth. Who'd heard him screaming in the woods and still told him with a straight face, _Daryl won't like it._ She'd be eighteen next year, she'd be _there_ next year, naked and eyes afire, chasing screamers through the trees. She'd be right there with Gareth, with Michonne, with Maggie and Glenn and Andrea, mouth bloody and howling. _I'll make you mine,_ she said, and it was Beth atop him on the bloody kitchen floor, against the tree in the woods, Beth who forced his head away from his shoulder and sank in her teeth.

Rick staggered against his car door, the keys slipping in his fingers. The headlights flashed and he got the door open, threw himself inside and slammed it behind him. It was hot as hell and he was panting for air, his eyes on the back door of the Greene house, jabbing the key at the ignition. He only understood that he was crying when hitting the wipers didn't clear the wind shield. In the rear view mirror, Rick saw that the bite had bled through the bandage and was now bleeding through the borrowed shirt.

 _You got to kill him,_ Daryl had whispered, his head close to Rick's, his eyes yellow slits in the dark. _You got to, Rick. You can't fight him, and if you let him chase you he'll catch you. You got to kill him now. Rick, please. Please._

 _I can't,_ Rick had said. Afraid but trying not to show it, calm everywhere but inside. Determined to do the right thing anyway. So fucking stupid. _I can't._

 _Rick._ Daryl had looked at him so intently, so hopelessly. _Rick, I can't. I can't let him catch you._

 _He won't,_ wasn't that what he'd said, the stupid son of the bitch, he'd actually said that. _I'll be fine, don't worry._

_Rick._ The unhappiness in Daryl's face.  _I can't let him catch you._

_Daryl,_ Rick had said, and put his hand on Daryl's arm, between wrist and elbow, moving as deliberately as he could so that Daryl would see it coming.  _It's okay. I'll be fine._ The man with no plan, just the idea that there was right and wrong and he knew where he stood.

The look Daryl gave him then. A look that was anger and anguish and something else Rick couldn't or wouldn't name. The look on his face when he said,  _I won't let him catch you._

That same look again, three hours later, when Rick, heady with exhaustion, looked up to see Daryl walking toward him out of the dark, shadows for eyes and skin. Rick relaxed against the tree at his back, smiling up at those eyes, _Hey brother._ Thinking, I'm safe, until Daryl stood over him much too close, his fingers sliding into Rick's hair. Until Daryl dropped suddenly to one knee, his other hand gripping Rick by his neck. Until he used those holds he had on Rick to force him, inexorably, onto his back, his shoulder blades scraping dirt and roots and his cry of shock cut off by a gasp.

 _Mine,_ whispered Daryl, his breath hot on Rick's face. He didn't seem to notice Rick's struggling. His eyes were mineral yellow in the darkness. _Mine._

His mouth opened. His teeth gleamed.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is in answer the several werewolf AU prompts I found on the Walking Dead Kinkmeme. It's probably not what any of them wanted.


End file.
